Monday, September 09, 2013

New Line Cinema has just begun production of Rampage! Wow
guys! That’s…actually been known since 2011 according to the article that
Forbes quoted. And the last shred of “news” about Rampage (you know that game
where you can be one of three monsters, run around a city, and destroy it
within a time limit to get the most points), was in 2012
inching ever closer to 2 years ago when a writer may have been named. Since
then, news about the film has completely dropped off the radar. So why is
Forbes bringing it up now? Well it could be to talk about how bad video game
movies are. Or it could be to start a trend on new gaming movies coming out
with the super hero boom starting to wane now that the Dark Knight franchise
has ended, and Iron Man is “supposedly” at its last call. The Avengers, Thor,
and Captain America will still go on. So I’m not really sure where Forbes is
going with this. But a movie that has been in “talks” for almost 3 years isn’t
really pushing forward on the production scene. Let’s wait until we get a
release date, k?

Besides, they would take soooooo many liberties with the
film. The plot line of the game is beyond simple. It would be easy to fabricate
the story into something much more grand and ridiculous for a movie.

Second! Blizzard, the kings of Western gaming has hired lobbyists
to advocate on a bill current sitting in the Senate regarding a comprehensive
study of the impact of violent video games on children.
The request was filed at the end of August and they went for the biggest guns they could get in D.C.: Akin Gump. However,
neither Blizzard or Akin Gump have commented as to which position the game
developer has on the bill. The bill was originally introduced in January to
call on the National Academy of Sciences to examine if there is a link between
violent gaming and aggressive behavior in children. It would also look at if
games would have an increased affect on those children who are already prone to
increased aggression. Mostly it is of the belief that games are more
interactive and pervasive that it is likely to affect children deeply in
comparison to a film or tv show.

The idea behind the bill is to give a more accurate review
of how games affect children and if action should be taken to limit their
sales, distribution, etc. It’s that slippery slope we are all too familiar with.
There are a number of factors to be concerned about, such as how the study
would be ran, how to remove any inherit bias (because there is always some in
every study), and how the heck are we paying for this? I don’t know which side
Blizzard is on, but if the bill is passed, I do hope they take a logical and
academic approach to the study.